For a ray of sunlight

Splashed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Sunday mornings are generally associated with all things nice and sunny . " --- if you had been a simpleton like me to believe in something like that , you should have been with me in ahmedabad the day i landed there . It was raining cats and dogs (and probably donkeys !! because i saw an unusually high number of donkeys on the way to the guest house) . Smart as i am , i had anticipated that monsoons in west india wouldn't be starting till mid-july , so here i was in a city ...
witnessing its most rainy week in years .. without an umbrella !!!

However , consolation lay ahead .. from my side seat in the auto (charged us Rs.150 instead of the normal Rs.60) i saw a new species of human beings .......
"dancing and singing in the rain .. from the very rich to the not-so rich to the quite poor .. absolutely everyone .. without a care in the world . be it the loving father and daughter , the lovey-dovey young couple or the middle-aged spouses --- none wanted to miss out on a free-for-all wetty outing . in general , the people here seemd much happier than the average kolkatan and that was my first impression of this traffic-police-less city filled with multiplexes and shopping malls." Oh !! my consolation .. almost all the people seemed to have forgotten about the existence of their umbrellas (or probably didnt have any) and this , in a strange way, cheered me up !!!

The most notable things in the next three days :
1) Our room had a TV and AC , so the comfort was not compromised ;-)
2) The food at the guest house was dirt-cheap and so were the ice-creams at the Amul parlour a stone's throw away .
3) My roommates were busy reading up GRE stuff .. and so made me feel like a moron .
4) I had daily breakfast after a long time (generally skip it at home as well in kgp) and it was really very pampering (it was the best meal of the day .. after lunch).
5) Had the most sumptuous lunches in years .. around 15 chhota puris everytime !!!! thats because the dishes were quite delicious (and all veg. dishes ... so i might be able to suggest something the next time i dine with some veg-food-gobbling company ) .
6) Quite a few beautiful peacocks and their incessant screams throughout the day and night .
7) Daylight till around 8 in the evening ( and we had dinner at 7:45 !!!! )
8) Almost forgot about our work ... that will take a paragraph ..thankfully ;-)

We needed special security passes to get into the actual working area, so we were already important people . Now, our guide there overestimated us and there lay the main problem (and dpc's tactlessness didnt help either) . So soon we were engulfed in discussions which were far beyond our comprehension and were soon asked to go and chill out in the library while pondering over what had been discussed . and the next two days were spent in the same fashion .. between the library and two professors rooms . In between we had to prepare a write-up , and i am very grateful to the two profs for not having voiced their genuine dissatisfaction at our efforts (or rather the lack of it). We were also showed around the labs and invited to go there next summer for training !!!! An idea worth considering ?? CERTAINLY NOT after what happened in the next two days .

Before catching our thursday train back , we decided to check out the city .
Laziness is the hall mark of any group which has me as its part and ahmedabad was too big !!
So we went to the nearest multiplex and watched PAHELI (the first SRK movie i havent liked for years !! if only PARINEETA's show timings were more compatible .. and one more thing .. kolkata's multiplexes are far better than the one i saw here) . Then had my first ever bite at a McDonalds (again disappointing) .... had to scramble around a bit to find a restaurant and then had my first taste of non-veg food in almost a week !!!!!!! then back to guest house and wimbledon .

Our train was at 3:40 and we reached the station (this time the auto just charged Rs.60.. probably auguring the troubles that lay ahead of us) at 2:45 . heard the train was 3 hours late, then 5 hours .. and then 8 hours !! after waiting in the waiting room(another first for me) for nearly six hours , our train was finally cancelled :((
it had been raining incessantly in most parts of gujarat and the rail tracks in some parts had become dangerous . the roads in ahmedabad too were inundated and so we had to take a taxi (Rs.250) and we were at our wits' end.

Next morning , it was still raining and we met our guide . Now , he was very keen to get us out of ahmedabad . His basic idea was : take any train to go to any city in northern india and from there take a train to howrah !!!!!!! ridiculously simple idea which meant we would have to travel without reservations for more than two days . Worse still , no trains were leaving !! and then we were also told that we have to leave the guest house by sunday !!!!!!!! NOW THAT WAS ENOUGH .....

This was an adventure in the making but we are but mere mortals .. so we took the escapist's (could also be the most practical and feasible if also economically extravagant) route out ---- IC 7268 Ahmedabad to Kolkata Saturday evening 6:55 . No more drama . And as we left the guest house the second time on Saturday afternoon (praying that we wouldn't have to come back one more time and wondering how much compensation we could extricate from our project guide back in kgp) , i looked up at the cloudy skies ....

It was still drizzling and the cloud-cover was ubiquitous ...
i hadn't witnessed a single ray of sunlight in the seven days i had been here .


PS : the ending is probably a little abrupt because i thought i should let you think and reflect !!
the timeline of my blog is at present running backwards (my next post should be on the "summer at kgp" ... ) so please bear with me (its not intentional , and i too hate "Memento")